European Tropical Forest Research Network

ETFRN has faced serious financial and organizational difficulties over the past years. Tropenbos International has sought to retain the ETFRN coordination unit through project funding for specific activities such as ETFRN News issues and workshops. Unfortunately, the costs were not fully covered during 2004 and 2005, and Tropenbos has recently indicated that while it wishes to remain an active member of the network, it can no longer host the ETFRN coordination unit. ECOFOR (France), VITRI (Finland), TBI (Netherlands) and KEF (Austria) have agreed to seek ways to continue ETFRN through their combined efforts, while seeking additional support from other core network members. Any practical suggestions and support will be most welcome.

Meanwhile, the ETFRN website continues to attract a large number of visitors: for the year 2006, the average number of visits per month was 30 000, with a peak of 50 000 last March. The ETFRN website was recently included in ‘A good place to start’, the IDS Knowledge services guide to finding development information online. IDS is the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom. The booklet can be downloaded from http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/info/sli.html or from http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/info/docs/Good%20place%20to%20start.v14.pdf . Development organizations in low and middle income countries may request a free copy by sending their name, organization and address to agoodplacetostart@ids.ac.uk

The Eldis OnDisc initiative has sought and received permission from ETFRN to include recent editions of the ETFRN news on future discs. The Eldis OnDisc initiative provides offline access to development information via CD-Rom. The first disc was published November 2006. It is the first of a series, containing Eldis’ selection of the best in recent development research, policy and practice. For more information on the Eldis OnDisc initiative, please contact eldisondisc@ids.ac.uk, or Eldis OnDisc, Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, Brighton,BN1 9RE, UK.

Results, presentations and background material for the Forum on Security, Development and Forest Conflict are available at http://www.etfrn.org/etfrn/sdfc/index.htm. The International Crisis Group, Fiona Hall, MEP, and Chris Davies, MEP hosted the forum in Brussels on 8 and 9 February 2006. It was supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the UK Department for International Development (DFID), and the Netherlands Ministry for Foreign Affairs, in partnership with the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), ETFRN, and ARD, Inc.

For links and information on international forest policy, please visit the pages developed together with the GTZ International Forest Policy group: http://www.etfrn.org/etfrn/topics/policy/index.html

The ETFRN webmaster has developed a new links page on forests and the Millennium Development Goals: http://www.etfrn.org/etfrn/resource/frames/linkmdgs.html